Let's Talk Turkey

I think I’ve promised you a food post a few times now. So let’s do it.

My first introduction to real Egyptian food came on my first day in Edfu when we ordered koushari. I’m not counting what we had on the boat during our honeymoon as “real Egyptian”, because honestly, it’s far from it. Koushari is a strange dish. Its ingredient list goes something like this:

Rice

Macarroni and spaghetti noodles

Lentils

Chickpeas

Fried onions

Tomato sauce

Mix all that together and you have koushari. Sounds delightful, huh? Actually, when done correctly, it’s really quite good and filling.

Most of our meals are made by our cook Muhammad and served by Taib. When I asked if I could take their picture, Muhammad gave me a little dance.

Muhammad is on the left, Taib on the right.

Breakfast (at 5:30am) consists of local breads, cheeses, yogurt, and bananas. Lunch (when we return from site around 2) has some of the same breads and fruits and cheeses, but we add some kind of meat (like tuna from a can mixed with vegetables, or cold leftovers from the night before’s meat dish mixed into pasta) and some salads/spreads (cucumber/tomato/onion salad, babaganoush, soft cheeses mixed with veggies, etc). There’s also occasionally an omelet with nothing inside. Dinner (7:30pm) is slightly more elaborate. That usually has a soup (these are SUPER good. We’ve had vegetable, lentil, and a ‘birdseed’ that is my absolute favorite. I’m tempted to bring Muhammad home with me just for the soups); main meat dish (pigeon and fish, being some, or the super awesome chicken from last night- oven roasted with American herbs) with sides of rice, vegetables usually cooked in kind of stew form, and french fries; and a dessert, usually of fruit salad, but occasionally something more elaborate (like the most amazing baklava I’ve ever eaten or banana crepes). Our food is mainly traditional Egyptian fare, but we’ve trained Muhammad to cook them in a slightly more Western-palate-pleasing way (read: don’t fry everything).

We do eat one other meal: we have a “second breakfast” on site that is sandwiches from a local shop that a workman gets for us around 10am. There’s one that’s a spicy bean paste; one with cucumbers, tomatoes, and falafel; and what Kat likes to call “greasy stuff”, which has greasy eggplant and... other things in it. We’ve only had the ‘greasy stuff’ once, and since it was my first day on site, I thought I’d better let m stomach get used to the food a little more before trying it. All of the sandwiches are served on this chewy pita bread that is delicious! I must say, though, eating these things every single day is getting a little tiresome. There’s no variety and I’m not a huge fan of them to begin with, so second breakfast is always a mixed feeling for me- I’m hungry, but I don’t really want another sandwich.

I now have a new role in the food business: accountant. Basically, once a week I sit down with one of our cooks/housemen and we balance the books. He tells me what he bought and how much it costs, I keep a tally of it so that Nadine can get paid back at the end of the season from her grant. It’s kind of fun, since both the cook and I learn new words.

Overall, the food isn’t bad. I really, really love the soups and I’m usually quite pleased with dinner. I have to say that I’m getting a little bored of breakfast and second breakfast, but I think if I pick up some things to add to the yogurt (it’s plain now and the only add-in is honey) when we go to Luxor, it might spice things up a bit. At least I don’t totally hate everything, so that’s good.

- Food critic and accountant

PS. I have not yet had to make multiple trips to the bathroom for one reason or another, so let’s hope that keeps up. There’s always the chance that some of the food will not be stored completely correctly which will upset me, but I should now be past the point of getting sick because I’m not used to the bacteria here.

PPS. I might have said this already, but we’re heading to Luxor right after work on Saturday for Chicago House’s Halloween party, then we’re staying on Sunday to get our passport visas renewed. Since I probably won’t have time to physically post this weekend, so I’ve got a few things that will automatically post for you. Next week I’ll have tons to tell, since I want to tell you all about the party and our day in Luxor on Sunday. Also, provided everything goes as planned, I’ll have a surprise for you early next week :)

More Crazy Food!

So glad you all liked my post of the pigeon! I swear I'll have a true food one coming later, but to whet your appetites, let's talk about what I had for dinner last night. We had bolti-fish! In fact, we had whole bolti-fish, heads on and everything. It had been battered, so you couldn't see much, but it was for sure looking at you. The cook had stuffed it with some nice herbs and it has the flakiness of tilapia. I was even super adventurous- Nadine said that the best part of the fish was actually the cheek. No one else braved digging through the fish head for this little piece of meat, but where else am I going to get fish cheek from a fish caught not more than 500 ft. away only hours earlier? Before I found the cheek, though, I did discover the eyeball. I wasn't quite *that* adventurous (though the Food Network tells me they are delicious). No idea what's on tap for tonight, but I'm guessing we'll go back to chicken or beef.

Last night I went up to the roof to read and found one of our men sitting there. Houses in Egypt are left unfinished for two reasons: you don't pay taxes if your house isn't done, and you are only allowed to build up, not out. So the roofs are typically quite nice and can be walked/sat on. Anyway, I was telling Ahmed that I'm trying to learn Arabic and so he started teaching me some more words. I can now add clothesline, clothespin, flip-flop, bench, and mat to my list of useless words I know. I can also say, "I draw pottery" and "I'm crazy"- both are true and both come in handy fairly often. The guys get a big kick out of me trying to learn Arabic b/c I get very excited when I remember a word and tend to yell it out. They probably wonder why I'm always yelling "mosquito" and "teddy bear". We're headed to Luxor this weekend and I won't get a chance to physically blog daily, so I've got a few things read to post, one of which is a list of words that I know in Arabic. So stay tuned.

- Eater of all the foodstuffs

PS. I told you yesterday that I'd try to post some pictures of the tell site. I try not to lie:

Looking up from where we draw pottery in the open-air museum. Those little roofs you see are probably 8 ft high.

Looking at the temple from the top of the tell. Hello, little people.

PPS. I can actually say 'I'm a crazy cat lady', too. Since we daily feed the 3 temple cats and 1 likes to come over and cuddle in the afternoon, most of the men think we are, in fact, crazy cat ladies.

Oh, The People You'll Meet

Aside from just our group from UofC, we have a lot of Egyptians that are instrumental in this excavation. Here are 3 of them:

This is Eslam, our reis. He’s basically the Egyptian head honcho, watching over all of the workmen. He brought a small team of specialists with him from Luxor that have worked with us before and are trained in finding small details (they are also SUPER protective of us and make sure that none of the locals so much as bat an eye funny at us). Eslam also acts as our Egyptian liaison. Anything we need in the town, from cell phones to workmen to car drivers to refrigerators (seriously), Eslam coordinates them all.

Meet Ossama, our site inspector. Ossama is assigned by the SCA to make sure we are following all the rules and don’t damage the site. He’s really nice and very funny. I feel a little bad for him, though, because he really has nothing to do all day, so he kind of wanders from our area down drawing pottery to up where the digging is going on at the tell.

This last guy doesn’t have a name. Well, I’m sure he does, but I don’t know it. This poor dude has the sole job of carrying water from the bathrooms to the tell site about ¼ mile away for the 70 workmen (!! this number is insane. Last year during the first week, we could only get 15. It shows you how bad the economy here is that less than $10/day doing hard manual labor is actually desired). He must make the trip 20 times per day. It’s all in the sun and he has these really crappy flip-flops. Every time he passes, I feel so bad for him.

- People person

PS. Have I explained what a tell is? Probably not. Basically, it’s a big giant mound where layers and layers of habitation have built up into a mini-mountain. The ancients would kind of just fill in old houses and build on top, so tells build up fairly quickly and can be quite high. Ours is only preserved to about half of what it would have been originally, and it is probably 15 meters high (perhaps more? It’s hard to guess). I’ll try to throw up another photo at some point that has some men on it for scale.

PPS. You thought I forgot about the pigeon, didn’t you? Never fear! I even have a picture:

The pigeon actually wasn’t bad. Our cook marinated it in some sauce that was very flavorful and filled the whole body with some kind of hearty rice. It tasted a lot like dark meat turkey. My biggest complaint was that there was hardly any meat on it, and what was there was impossible to find/get at. In total, there was probably the same amount of meat on the whole bird that you’d find on a large chicken wing. I’d eat it again if we’re served it, but I’d rather have a nice juicy steak... or hamburger... or fried chicken... or ice cream... it’s going to be a long season. A more detailed food blog is to come.